


An Immutable Truth

by ivyspinners



Category: Akatsuki no Yona | Yona of the Dawn
Genre: 3 Things, Angst and Humor, Complicated Relationships, During Canon, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, Multi, Pre-Canon, Pre-OT3, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 11:35:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29081748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyspinners/pseuds/ivyspinners
Summary: Yona considers Hak. He's never hidden anything of himself, except this one want—one love—she had felt even in childhood, without understanding and without name. And that one furious betrayal tucked in his heart. He doesn't look so angry any longer. Perhaps it no longer festers out of sight.She sighs. Decides to barrel straight into it. "I had a dream about that once. The three of us."Hak stares at her. She feels her face turning red."What?" she demands."I really didn't expect that," Hak says blankly. "I should really stop underestimating you. Hey—ow—"
Relationships: Son Hak/Soo-Won/Yona
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	An Immutable Truth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [undomesticatedmarshmallow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/undomesticatedmarshmallow/gifts).



**i.**

Hak has never seen Soo-Won flush, no matter how he is praised. He can count on one hand how often he's seen Soo-Won lose his composure—none of them in the past three years, even when Hak gifts him a wry compliment.

It's grounding. Soo-Won will make a good consort to Yona's sometimes-flustered queen. The knowing thrums through his chest, like pieces settling into place.

But today, Soo-Won had arrived for Yona's sixteenth birthday celebrations, and there had been that whisper of _marriage_ —that Soo-Won must have known, for years, has been on everyone's lips—and he had faltered. Then he had hesitated at the idea of Hak as their general.

The image burns through Hak's veins as he goes searching for Soo-Won again. It's not right. Until the truth is settled, he will feel restless under his skin.

Lamplight flickers over Soo-Won's head, bent over a manuscript, a shimmer of gold in between piles of scrolls piled high. Dust hangs, indolent, in the air.

"Hak?" Soo-Won asks. He takes a moment before looking up. By then, his face is composed. If Hak weren't looking for it, if Hak did not know Soo-Won like he does, he wouldn't see the curl of Soo-Won's fingers at the edge of his desk.

"What was that, earlier?" Hak demands. Soo-Won doesn't move. "Were you about to say no?"

You don't read Soo-Won by looking at his face. This time, a restless twitch of this thumb. "Nothing was offered. It would be impolite to assume something by declining."

Hak lays his guangdao against the door-frame. There are no enemies here except misunderstandings. He knows Soo-Won cares for Yona and that he cares for the country. They had spent evenings together in this study speaking of tactics—in the theoretical, King Il wouldn't allow war games within walking distance of the palace—with more than just interest.

"This isn't the place for lies," he says. Each word, accompanied by a step that brings him closer to Soo-Won. "You know how Yona feels. If you can tell me that you don't love her, then I won't mention it again. What do you want?"

Both his hands are on Soo-Won's desk. They know each other well enough that Soo-Won would not take this as a threat.

Soo-Won stares up him, a flicker beneath his eyelids. Up close, Hak sees a glimmer of perspiration beneath Soo-Won's outer robe, sliding down the muscle of his neck. The buzzing beneath Hak's skin returns.

"Hak," Soo-Won starts.

"The truth," says Hak.

Soo-Won makes a choking sound. He fists his hand in Hak's outer tunic, hesitates just long enough that Hak notices— _remembers_ , later that night in the bloodied darkness—and pulls.

There's no experience to the kiss. Unlike every other aspect of Soo-Won that he's rubbed to a shine, no polish. There's just their noses bumping, Soo-Won's lips soft and firm and a touch dry from all the riding in the past month. He bunches up Soo-Won's robe at the shoulder, tilts his head just so, and oh. That's how to kiss. That's what it feels like to have lips moving together. Teeth catch at the corner of his mouth, and shock displaces want, is torn up from within by _want_ , until the desk digs into Hak's belly and hips.

For one crazy instant, Hak imagines Yona there with them, hands clasped over her open mouth. Something thrills through his veins, and it isn't guilt.

"What was that?" Hak gasps.

Soo-Won doesn't smile. "Truth."

The funny thing is, not once does Hak think that this—this—is a _replacement_. A _you, instead_ , so much as a _you, also_ , which he hadn't dared imagined before while awake.

He laughs. Smooths Soo-Won's crumpled sleeve. Relief makes him weak-kneed. "I don't think you have anything to worry about, then."

Soo-Won does not. It is Hak and Yona, in the face of another _truth_ greater than theirs, who have something to fear, instead.

**ii.**

Hak and Yona's first kiss is a desperate, unplanned thing at the eve of war. Their second is flooded with relief.

Yona doesn't think she will ever be tired of sharing kisses with Hak. Even when the thrill settles beneath her skin, it's warm in a way Yona doesn't find elsewhere, like an extension of evenings with Hak's arms around her, or hers around him. She doesn't mind.

There's an art to kissing, she finds. Ways to tilt her head to fit together, places to run her lips that make Hak shudder, skin to rouse with a scratch of her blunt nails, nooks and crannies she teases with her tongue and teeth to leave marks. There are very few ever skilled enough to land a finger on Hak, all of whom she would fight to keep him from harm. But Yona marks him. Hak lets her.

When she runs her tongue over his lips, he opens his mouth with a moan and invitation. He crooks his neck and shows his throat, at the touch of her fingers. And his hands on her hips, a gentle nudge, is enough to tell her to rise. To take.

"Quiet," she murmurs once, the first words of their evening. Dusk fell like a soft blanket while they touched, and dewdrops now pebble each blade of grass.

"Don't want to be discovered?" Hak teases, a breath at her ear.

"Not by them," Yona says, and he laughs and flops backwards. "Oh, shut it."

They watch the stars twinkling into view, settled for the moment. Yona had watched the stars at the palace, too, dipping past the horizon where she could not go. There are so very many. She hadn't been able to see them all in the city, where lamps flooded with light at night, painting clouds' underbellies.

It's like a whole new sky, so far away. But it was never new. She had just never seen it like this.

"Not by _them_ ," Hak says, after a moment. His hands are cushioning his head, pressed firmly into inaction.

Yona considers Hak. He's never hidden anything of himself, except this one want—one _love_ —she had felt even in childhood, without understanding and without name. And that one furious betrayal tucked in his heart. He doesn't look so angry any longer. Perhaps it no longer festers out of sight.

She sighs. Decides to barrel straight into it. "I had a dream about that once. The three of us."

Hak stares at her. She feels her face turning red.

"What?" she demands.

"I really didn't expect that," Hak says blankly. "I should really stop underestimating you. Hey—ow—"

She claws at his shoulder until he's rolling around for mercy. "Not like that!" Kind of like that. "It was just being together at the court, and—on the cheek—!"

Yona relents at the exact moment Hak grows tired of it, catching her wrists and hauling her across with a sharp jerk. She ends up on top, knees framing his hips.

"And?" Hak asks, lips brushing hers.

"It wasn't as a queen," Yona gasps. She hadn't had the imagination, she thinks, for the details of the politics or intimacy of it. Just a sense of an immutable truth. "It was just the three of us, standing side by side, once... we were returned from a trip outside."

She doesn't dream of that any more.

The stars really are bright tonight, glittering distant and cold.

But Hak's arms are warm.

**iii.**

There's probably some kind of irony to it, that when Soo-Won finds the safe-house in Northern Kouka where Hak protects Yona—battle raging outside—they are kissing. Frantically, with teeth and moans and arms wrapped tight, so close they might melt together. The flame of Yona's hair caught between Hak's fingers.

It makes him forget his head, pounding and splitting like wood splintering beneath an axe.

Soo-Won watches them for a moment longer, lets the restlessness rise and fade, and turns to give them privacy.

Fortunately, it doesn't fall to him to interrupt. Thunder claps in the distance, followed by a rumble that makes the ground shake. Chunks of rock crash onto the wooden floor, and he hears Hak hiss. Then—

"Soo-Won!" Yona cries. "Watch out!"

He's tackled, rolled over. His vision explodes with fine red mist, white-edged with pain across the edges. The floor crumples beneath debris falling into a heap exactly where he had been. He could have dodged it, even six months ago; would have moved aside on instinct, where now even thought and willpower barely suffice.

"Some safe-house," says Hak, above him. "If it weren't for the arrows, I'd take my chances outside."

Yona's face reflects her thoughts, which is fortunate, because her thoughts reflect _his_. She catches his gaze and tilts her head, as if to say, _you go first_.

"If it weren't for Yona, you mean," Soo-Won says.

"Not just Yona," murmurs Hak, looking directly at him.

"But now Soo-Won is here," Yona says, building on his words in a way Soo-Won had not expected, "and his soldiers will protect this safe-house. Your men need you. I can take care of myself."

Hak scoffs. There is a long, long pause where Soo-Won refuses to get into a staring contest. Hak scoffs again, runs a hand roughly across Soo-Won's shoulder in a way that probably wasn't intentional, and bends down in a way that certainly is.

There's a lot more assurance, in this kiss, for all the chaos outside the doors. Hak's fingers rest at his jaw, his callouses rough against Soo-Won's neck, and he guides their faces to an angle that stretches his neck back. It feels like the breath is being drawn from his lungs, a tension that rises, then falls as he relaxes at last. He almost gasps when Hak's lips leave his, but it's only to take residence at his throat in patches of warmth. At some point, he took hold of Hak's collar, pulling him close; he's not sure when.

A second pair of smaller hands join in; Yona, with a quiet, tender look shared with Hak, presses Soo-Won's hand until his palm flattens on Hak's shoulder, like she can hold onto them both kneeling by their side.

"I can care for him too," she says. She lays her quiver and bow on the floor, eyes challenging and deliberate, like an argument. Or a compromise.

Hak grins, wolf-like. "I know."

He lifts himself off Soo-Won, leaving a rush of chill. Soo-Won lets him go. For an instant, standing in the doorway with the sky and fields burning, he looks rimmed by light. Then Hak is gone, and the door closed.

Yona has a peculiar look on her face. Like many of her expressions over the past year, Soo-Won can't read it in its entirety.

"You're in pain," she says. A cool, damp cloth presses across his forehead, a relief against the pounding that returned. She sighs. "I hoped the medicine would last longer."

"It lasted long enough," Soo-Won says. "If we win this battle, Kouka will be safe."

Yona stares at him, unblinking. "The fields are burning. The Fire Tribe's people barely had enough to eat before all this started. They will not survive the battle."

"But they'll have the fields to plant again instead of going hungry," says Soo-Won.

Yona makes a dissenting noise. She's usually more forthright when she disagrees, disarming one moment before she cleaves an argument into two. Soo-Won wonders if it's a skill she learned in her time away—hunted then hunting, escaping and not—or if he never had reason to see it before, when Yona had never disagreed with him.

She leans over as she changes the flannel, and again that flash of hair catches his eye. It's brighter than the red of his vision, but soothing. She nibbles at her kiss-swollen lips. Soo-Won is usually better at laying Yona into a corner of his mind, tucked away while he considers other pressing matters, but his head is pounding, and her fingers and her cloth are cool.

Hak and Yona do have a way of making him lose his head. This time, battle raging outside, possibly in a literal sense.

"What will you do?" Soo-Won asks. _After_ , he means. He doesn't have to clarify, when it comes to Yona — this Yona.

"Does it worry you?" Yona answers without answering. Soo-Won turns his head away. "I'll protect the people of Kouka. Whatever it takes. Your generals may not support me, but I hope their people will."

Soo-Won already knows they will, with the dragons by Yona's side. It is why he worries. He doesn't need gods breaking down the lines and laws written by men.

Yona's fingers trace the edge of the cloth, sweeping across his hairline. She had done the same, when isolated in the palace—her home, but not her home—entering places with her force of will alone. Ah, yes. Yona, crossing from the personal into the business of the country. Not so easy to forget. Her face is unreadable.

"What am I thinking?" Yona says, answering his unasked question. Her fingers pause; her laugh rings bitter. "That I don't forgive you. That I don't like to see you in pain. That we were closer in the past year than the sixteen years before that, even though you were a thousand miles from us, and your soldiers hunting us down. That I will never wish for your death. That you never wished for mine."

Her eyes glimmer, bright with wetness. Soo-Won watches back and doesn't close his eyes.

She kisses him. Unlike with Hak the first time, but very much like just minutes ago—they kiss as though they learned with each other—there's no knocking of teeth or faces, just heat and lips and tongue, and as bright as those, her fingers caressing his cheek. The feeling of intimacy, with one of the two people in the world he had wanted and known he couldn't— _wouldn't_ —have if he continued down the path. Yona and Hak had gasped and clutched at each other, restless. Soo-Won feels rested, like something warm has curled up in his heart and nested. A piece settling into place—before it must leave again.

He's covered her fingers with his own, crushing them close, and keeps them there. For a moment. Then he lets go.

"What was this?" he asks her.

Yona smiles through her tears. "Truth."

Outside, the battle rages on.

In a crumbling safe-house, full of holes and sharp rocks, they wait.

**Author's Note:**

> And then Kouka is victorious, Soo-Won lives, and they all live somewhat complicatedly but happily ever after together, THE END.


End file.
